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So...

I started working on a squadron of Ravenwing Space Marine bikers. I was hoping they'd be done in time for the codex, but no such luck. A squad of six bikers (and two interchangable attack bikes) has taken from early December until now. Admittedly, some of that was the holidays, but I didn't begin to expect that 8 models would take me so long.

I then started taking a look at how much I am really painting. I have 8 bikes (and two sidecars) and then 10 marines. Well over the equivalent of 2 tactical squads worth of job. My GF also bought me new Winsor and Newton brushes and the extra brushcare (I used to use essentially disposable junk brushes from Michael's - even with proper care they didn't last long) is also slowing the process down. This followed model prep and assembly on the bikes taking what felt like an inordinate amount of time (week and a half total time, spending most nights giving at least two hours to it) due to all the small fiddly bits, cleanup, assembly, and trying to make the seams between the two halves vanish.

Are these hangups normal? Was not taking into account the size of the bikes my achilles heel in this case?

And what projects have you guys have that just go from 'oh I'll get that done by Friday' to 'maaaaaaaaybe next month it'll be done'?

I started seriously building my army around September time. I planned on having 1500pts built and painted by the start of this year. Think I've painted 17 marines and a land speeder. The combination of being a bit of a perfectionist when modelling, a criminally slow painter and just having very little time is really hurting my plans. At this rate it'll be next January. It's frustrating. Wanna start playing games but don't want to sacrifice the quality.

I hear that. I've been working on a homebrew chapter of Space Marines for over a year and a half now. I've finished 22 tactical marines and 8 scout snipers. I've got a land speeder, 2 tactical marines, 10 assault marines, and two or three character models in the "works in progress" folder. I've finished a rhino, but I hate it so much I'm going to strip it and start over. On the plus side, I've learned a lot about painting, and you can really see my progress from my first model to my most recent ones.

Shameless plug: it's all in the P&M blog linked to in my signature.

Yep. The better you get and the more care you take, the longer it takes both to get into the swing of a session and clean up afterward, as well as the actual working time. Takes me 15 minutes to paint a face, but 10 minutes to plan it, and 5 minutes to clean up afterward. Couple that with demands of family / life and things dondag on. Get used to it. :-)

Got the gorgon infantry squads for my krieg army, 50 men in total. And i got them during the summer holidays. I have assembled 30 and painted 20. With the other 20 men left in their strips. Although as i am Typing this I have returned to these models, i honestly thought I'd have them done by Christmas. Although other painting projects have got in the way like tanks and characters, so my situation isn't that bad.

I built and painted my Tyranids in about four long weekends, using spray paints and QuickShade.

I wasn't concerned with super quality. I set myself the challenge to build the army from scratch for a tournament and it had to be done in time.

It was very helpful that I had the house to myself and could leave everything set up the whole weekend.

The main thing, though, was not to worry about high quality detail.

I don't think there is a short cut to painting lots of super detail on lots of models quickly.

I think all my projects fall within the subject line's scope.

My Tau Devilfish and Hammerhead are taking me WAY longer to paint than I would have liked. I chose a "simple" camo scheme, but was having an issue with my masking tape picking up the basecoat's paint. At that point I was just like...eff it I will hand paint the camo...and it took me like 3 weeks to finish my devilfish. A dark red base with a light red stripe means I have to do like 4 layers of thin light red to get it to show up really well. Each little jagged stripe is like a 40 minute job

I got a lot further today. Almost completely done with the white parts of the Ravenwing squadron (soooo many coats, urgh).

Anyways, I'm glad to not feel alone.

@Raatcharch: Nice stuff, man. You have definitively improved.